"But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created that a cat should play with mice."
-- Charles Darwin, Letter to Asa Gray

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Harry Potter and The Curse of the New

Maybe this is an article: The degree to which old professors scramble to keep their courses current. I don't mean new information. I mean new bottles for their very old wine. How do you keep culturally plugged in? Should you? Can you?

Will anyone notice?

No need for me to fret about this today. Romanesko presents a lovely ethical question -- I hate to dignify it by calling it a dilemma. I can use it in Journalism Ethics this fall.

Huffington PostAn angry Rachel Sklar has this message for the Times: "Come on: How on earth could you run a review of the last Harry Potter? To do so, you had to break an industry-wide embargo -- and not just any embargo, an embargo that is almost tantamount to a public trust at this point, given the worldwide hype about Harry Potter and the excitement and intense emotion generated by -- finally -- the end to this epic series."